Well this is just the usual launch of a resupply mission by a SpaceX Dragon Capsule…at least on the ascent. The part we are interested in here is the controlled landing of the first stage on an autonomous barge sitting and waiting patiently out in the Atlantic Ocean! If all goes well, this will usher in a new era of reusable rocketry!

So today I wanted to test the quality of my 3d printer. I lowered the layer height to 0.1mm. Normally I print at 0.2mm for “quality” prints and 0.4mm for “quick” prints. Below you can see a picture comparing the differences between the Bulbasaur I printed and a bracket for future printer upgrades. The bracket was 0.4mm layer height. You can barely see the layers on the Bulbasaur, but you can CLEARLY see the layers on the bracket! These are both fresh off the printer with no surface finishing done.

As you can tell by the pictures on the left, there is a gaping hole in the “bulb” of the print. From what I could observe by watching the timelapse video below, it was a combination of no cooling on the hot end facing the print to cool in between layers, and using too small of an infill setting (15%) causing it to have to run long bridges, which I don’t have completely tuned for. So both of those are on the list of things to be addressed! Let me know what you think, and see the timelapse below!

Here is an update on my 5 monitor desktop. I’ve decided to load up a Matrix screen saver on it. Sorry for the picture of the case being blurry, the LED case fans didnt agree with the camera Will make a video of the whole thing here in a bit. I’ve got a GTX 480 running the 24″ monitor, and dual GT 430s running the 15″ and the 17″ dell monitors. The processor is an FX 4100 quad core 3.6ghz that turbos to 3.8. With a better cooler I can probably get a stable clock of somewhere around 4.0. Right now I only have 8gb of RAM but will be adding 8 more when I can afford to do so. I 3d printed VESA mounts that are holding the 15″ monitors on to the 2×4 “cross” that I will be replacing soon with something more permanent, probably threaded gas pipe. Oh, and here’s the screen saver that I’m using: http://www.kellysoftware.com/ssaver/matrix_ks.asp

It was a bit of a pain to get it to run vertical to the 15″ monitors, but I got it. Will probably make a mini-tutorial of how I set it up later. Let me know what you think

Decided to use the famous Barnacules Unboxing knife to test the upgrades I recently did to my 3d printer. I was printing around 150mm/s at 0.1mm layer height. I had to scale down the print to 90% because my bed was just slightly to small. Still turned out great As promised, here are the links:
Barnacules’ Channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/barnacules1
My Twitter: https://twitter.com/KellerRobotics
My Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KellerRobotics

So today I’m setting up my new/improved computer system. I’ve been running three monitors for quite some time, and I think its about time to add a couple more monitors! I’ll be doing a video either today or tomorrow about the “guts” of my computer which includes a GTX 480 (the new 980s are expensive for poor people like me ) and a new mothberboard that should be showing up today so I can get my 480 and two GT 430s, along with my FX 4100 3.4ghz quad core which doesnt work in my current motherboard (socket AM2, bleh) which has a dual core Athlon II 2.8ghz which might get used in a future project. The VESA mount brackets attaching the two dell 15″ monitors are 3d printed and seem to be quite strong. The 2x4s are just temporary so I can figure out how I want to mount them more permanently. Let me know what you think!

So the 3d printed arms in my previous post didnt quite work out as well as I had hoped. They were a little to flimsy to take the beating that it gets while I’m learning to fly it. I may go back to them in the future, but for now I’m just using the injection molded ones that came with it, which are MUCH stronger. I’m using a KK Multicopter 2.0 board, an F450 frame, 1000kv motors, 30a brushless controllers, and 1045 props, all run by dual 2200mah 11.1v 3s packs that are connected for 4400mah. I’ve got parts on the way to upgrade the flight computer to a Multiwii v2.5 SE (Standard Edition) board, with an i2C GPS module, along with the bluetooth module so I can connect it wirelessly to my laptop and/or my Android phone for Altitude hold (barometer based, considering a sonar upgrade), GPS waypoints, and on the fly PID tuning (no pun intended). I’m looking into FPV (First Person View/Video) systems. Thats still under consideration, and I’m open to recommendations! Well guys, heres a test flight of my current setup, it had just stopped raining, and wis still rather windy so not only was it hard to fly because I’m not very experienced with it yet, on top of having to counteract the wind. Let me know what you guys think!

Here is what I’m working on right now. The first picture is of the arm that just finished printing, the second picture is of the quad with two of the four arms on it, and the third picture is the 3rd finished arm.

Sorry for the short(er than normal) video guys. Its getting pretty late here and my family is getting ready for bed, but I wanted to give you guys a quick update on how things are going! I’ve been working on several projects, including my 3d printer, a quadcopter, my desktop computer and a few other things!

So I modded my ebike motor today. My original plan was to just run thicker gauge copper wire instead of the crappy aluminum wire that came with the motor and drill cooling holes in the motor casing….I got a little more than I bargained for. The hall effect sensors ended up failing irreparably. Luckily my motor controller is a dual mode controller, and it works just fine! Ill put up a test video soon. It got up to 33.6mph today!